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Chaotic discussion on nuclear waste proposal for UK’s Allerdale region

A fortnight is a long time in politics, to slightly misquote former Prime
Minister Harold Wilson. Allerdale Working Group came out of the shadows to
meet a Stakeholder group on 17 August. That was the beginning of a chaotic
fortnight. At that meeting, Andy Ross, the individual who volunteered the
whole of Allerdale excluding the Lake District (where he lives) as a site
to bury the nation’s nuclear waste, was questioned.

He was asked why he
had chosen to exclude the Lake District National Park (LDNP), but not to
exclude the Solway Coast AONB. He said that he had chosen to exclude the
LDNP as Copeland had done the same, but that it may become part of the
search area again in the next stage of the process, known as the Community
Partnership.

This was a hugely controversial statement. It went against
everything said previously, but the rest of Allerdale Working Group did not
seek to correct it, they all listened and accepted the statement without
comment.

The next week, members of Cumbria Trust questioned the Chair of
Allerdale Working Group, Jocelyn Manners-Armstrong about the possible
re-inclusion of the LDNP. Rather than seek to correct this, she complained
that Cumbria Trust were not respecting the privacy of that earlier meeting,
which in itself was an absurd comment.

You cannot announce a major change
in policy – the re-inclusion of the LDNP as a potential site to bury
nuclear waste, and expect that to remain a secret.

RWM set about
fabricating an excuse for what was said. RWM’s response was entirely
disingenuous and intentionally misleading. Eddie Martin, former Leader of
Cumbria County Council has written to RWM to challenge their behaviour.
Here is the text of that letter:

“We were frequently promised an ’open
and transparent’ process by RWM and I’m afraid your email to me on 27
August falls a long way short of that goal, as do the responses from others
in your organisation to Colin Wales and your emails to the Allerdale
Stakeholder Group … This may be a 20 year search process. For it to
succeed, the public has to develop and maintain a high level of trust and
yet RWM have fallen at the first hurdle.”

 Cumbria Trust 31st Aug 2021

September 2, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | 1 Comment